Recharge, we have to recharge our work to specific projects / programs

This has to be Iain’s or Shirley’s budget. Shirley’s budget is for institutional related issues while Iain’s is specifically for research related matters.

People we charge for project will have to request for our services. We foresee some people not able to justify why they have to pay us, therefore we have to give them value for their money.

We have to give E&C services and products that they will not question our recharges rather than ask for more. We have to be effective in what we do.

What this means for us:

We will be forced to change how we work

We have to be aware of the time that we should be charging programs/projects

Change in managing our time in terms of understanding how we spend our time.

Peter and Shirley are working on the events that we will be working on. We need to look at the internal and external work that we will be doing.

We need to note that Shirley will have to approve everything that we have to be charged for.

Question:

Is this recharging issues the same for Capdev and business development or any other unit?

Ewen:

This applies to all units; check the last IMC meeting note for more clarifications. To enhance further understanding of this to staff, the Finance and Grants unit organized a budget meeting in Nairobi and Addis to make staff concerned with budget matters aware of this.

We also need to know that the entire CKM budget is high therefore; we have to look at what we do in a more constructive way.

Another reason for this is that there may be some budget crunch in some CRP’s and that will affect how we do business as a unit.

This will also increase our efficiency and service delivery.

We need to look at ways of promoting our services, there are lots of opportunities in Nairobi and Addis, we have to let people know what we do and what we can offer.

Question:

Are we going to be given a rate card for recharging etc?

Ewen: Yes, this is being worked on , Peter and Anne Kibe of Finance are working on this. In the past years we have been using one rate card that Abeba has but we need to find out if it’s still applicable.

We will have individual and general service rates, This will have to be communicated by Peter/Shirley ASAP.

OCS updates:

This might be launched in the first quarter of this year. So far we have developed an OCS communication strategy and some communication platforms that OCS need to use to impart communication to staff.

OCS will have training on time management that we should make a point of getting in to learn. This will greatly impact on our time management skills.

We only need to spend time on projects that will reward CKM. How do we start tracking our time?

-We have to take advantage of social platforms like Asana and Salesforce in the future.

-Take stock of what you are doing as an individual and a team.

Internal comms

P&OD , directorate and CapDEV need to work together on this.

Question:

Who will take ownership of the internal comms role?

Ewen:

it’s not clear at the moment but we have to take it up especially if we see a good opportunity. We have already done some work on this. We need to be aware of other actors that are in this game too.

-KRA’s and PDP’s – we have to think about this and what we want to do. This used to be done by P&OD but we will work on this.

-Office 365 might be coming. That would be a big change and it might affect the way we want.

-We can go beyond facilitating events, we need to look for more things and events, we need to have a strategy on what we want to do, where we want to go etc.

Question:

We are very reactive more than being reactive when it comes to what we do

Ewen: its our work to go and find what we need to do. We have to be more proactive to look for work rather than wait for people to come our way.

-Ewen we can develop a plan together on which programs /people to approach so that we can offer our services.

-Tsehay proposed to have the team leaders to approach programs and look for E&C opportunities. Please come up with ideas on how to go forward-

Question:Tsehay: If I come up with a proposal, can I be able to implement it as a CKM staff?

Ewen: That is possible talk to me then we will see if it is workable.

Planning priorities

Ewen shared a plan on what we planned in 2014 and how we performed. (Refer to CKM annual planning meeting docx-2015)

Ilri 40 done

Ckm change- done

Developing new terms of reference and function profiles- to discuss this with Peter and Nelly during the facilitation training in the week of 10-14 February.

Ckm strategy and plans- not done but on the way

Ocs comms roll out: strategies in place. Ocs will be rolled out in March/April

Livetalks to revive. This didn’t happen but it will happen this year

Internal communication: not gtreat/ not bad, but this year it will work.

What worked:

Ongoing meeting routine

Collaboration in different projects

Delivering on various fronts for instance, ILRI40,P&OD microsite, Africa Rising support etc

Piloting no email + asana experiment etc

More visibility within our CKM team

What could have worked better

More documentation of our work

Seminars

Internal comms

Better engagement via asana

Connecting to more teams

Finding ways to transition even more smoothly.

We have not done a lot to popularize what we are doing/ our role / within our team/its ok but to our publics it’s not well understood, we need to work on this more due to.